International Speaker

Anim was appointed editor of Africa Check in October 2015 after having served as deputy editor from July 2014. Previously she edited an award-winning national supplement in the Afrikaans papers Beeld, Die Burger and Volksblad and has also worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine writer and television producer. In 2016, she completed a Master’s degree in media management at Stellenbosch University – with a thesis titled “Fact-checking in the Global South: Facts about non-profit journalism funding models”, sharing the prize for best student.

Irene leads Google News Lab in the Asia-Pacific region. She was previously an investigative reporter and data editor at Reuters, where she was a 2017 Pulitzer finalist in the national reporting category. Earlier, she worked at the South China Morning Post and as a political reporter with the Times Union in Albany, New York. Before relocating to Singapore, she taught data-driven investigative journalism at the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Campbell Brown is the Global Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, leading the team responsible for helping news organizations and journalists around the world work effectively with Facebook. Campbell has nearly twenty years of experience in journalism, most recently as an award-winning anchor and correspondent for NBC News and CNN. At CNN, she anchored a weekday primetime news programme focusing on politics. Campbell has held several roles including being co-anchor of the weekend edition of ‘TODAY’ at NBC news and White House correspondent during President George W. Bush’s first term. She is also the founder of The 74, a non-profit news site covering education in America.

Amy is currently the Delhi-based South Asia bureau chief of the Financial Times, the London-based newspaper. Educated at the University of California, Berkeley and the London School of Economics, she previously spent eight years as the FT’s Bangkok-based south-east Asia regional correspondent. Amy has won numerous awards for her journalism, including India’s prestigious Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism award.

Rafida is a published author, moderator at Mukto-mona blog, the first online platform for Bengali-speaking freethinkers, and has been a Visiting Research Scholar at UT Austin since 2016, working on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Bonya is the widow of Avijit Roy, a well-known writer, blogger, and activist who founded Mukto-mona. Avijit was murdered and Bonya gravely injured when they were attacked by Islamists during a book-signing trip to Dhaka in 2015.

Benjamin began his career as a professional photographer, working in South Asia, and has subsequently worked as a Communications Manager for the United Nations and various international NGOs across Asia and Africa for 12 years. Ben was based in LTTE-controlled Vanni, North Sri Lanka with the UN from 2004 – 2008 throughout the conflict. A PhD in anthropology, he is currently a Senior Fellow in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. Ben founded PositiveNegatives to produce literary comics that explore complex social and human rights issues, including conflict, migration and asylum. PositiveNegatives has worked extensively with a range of organisations such as The Guardian, BBC, Channel 4, The Nobel Peace Centre, and the UN.

Francesca is Executive editor of virtual reality at The Guardian. A multi-award winning digital artist and journalist, she has lead immersive innovation at the Guardian for the last 10 years. She currently runs the Guardian’s in-house virtual reality production studio, dedicated to creating groundbreaking content. The studio’s first VR experience ‘A virtual experience of solitary confinement’ won attention around the world as an exemplary case of story and form. Before that she made interactive documentaries, augmented reality sound apps and led the Guardian’s podcast team. She started her career in BBC radio.

Since 2005 Christopher has been the host of Open Source, an online global conversation on arts, ideas and politics. A journalist in many media, he is credited with the original podcast – Radio on the Internet – in 2003. He has reported on US presidential politics for the New York Times in the 1970s, hosted public television news in Boston, and inaugurated the smartest of public radio conversations, The Connection, a national show based in Boston. He is known for the depth of his interviews with eminent personalities including John Updike, David Foster Wallace, Mohsin Hamid, and Orhan Pamuk, among others.

Aaron is the executive director of PolitiFact, the largest fact-checking organization in the United States. He leads the growth and development of PolitiFact, manages its outreach and news partnerships, and oversees new initiatives and product development. Aaron has been with PolitiFact since 2010 and served most recently as the editor of PunditFact, a website dedicated to checking claims by pundits, columnists, bloggers and the hosts and guests of talk shows. He was a 2016-17 Reynolds Fellow at the University of Missouri and taught a class on political fact-checking at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Marisa is an investigative reporter for The Indianapolis Star. She handles investigations relating to social services and welfare issues, including child abuse and neglect, poverty, elder abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence and access to mental health services. Marisa has earned more than 50 journalism awards, including IRE’s Tom Renner Award, a Sigma Delta Chi Award in public service, the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award and the Indiana Journalist of the Year. Prior to The Star, Marisa worked for media outlets in northwestern Indiana, South Carolina and Michigan.